A split-image of a woman's face, half human and half digital, with a world map and various countries' deepfake regulations highlighted in text and icons behind her.

Deepfakes, Voice Cloning, and AI Impersonation: The Global Rules Are Already Here, and They Don't Agree

Deepfakes, Voice Cloning, and AI Impersonation: The Global Rules Are Already Here, and They Don't Agree A cloned executive voice. A fake endorsement. A synthetic campaign ad. A deepfake intimate image. Each of these can now trigger criminal liability, consumer-protection claims, platform-removal obligations, or identity-rights lawsuits—depending on where your business operates and which country's law

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Illustration showing DMCA Compliance and safe harbor concepts with a large lock, policy documents, a computer, copyright symbols, a lawsuit, and people handling copyright notices and online infringements.

DMCA Agent Requirements for Online Businesses

DMCA Agent Requirements for Online Businesses A DMCA Agent Is Easy to Designate. Real Compliance Is Harder. Most online platforms treat the DMCA agent filing as a one-and-done administrative task. That is a mistake. They designate an agent, post a policy, and assume they have handled the issue. Then an actual dispute arrives. A notice

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DAO and Joint Liability

The DAO of Joint Liability

One month into a new administration inaugurated in part through the sale of billions of dollars of Trump meme coins, it should come as no surprise that the new administration is expected to put a full stop on the executive branch’s prodigious output of crypto and NFT enforcement actions in recent years. Even so, the

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A cityscape with skyscrapers is overlaid with digital graphics and the words "SMART CONTRACTS AND DAOS FROM A LAWYER'S POINT OF VIEW," along with a symbol resembling the Ethereum logo.

Smart Contracts and DAOs: A Lawyer’s Point of View

How Do Lawyers Think About and Read Smart Contracts? Smart contracts on blockchains like Ethereum are essentially computer programs written in specialized programming languages like Solidity. Smart contracts serve two main functions - acting as an "account" to hold, receive and send cryptocurrencies/tokens, as well as code that automatically executes one or more actions when

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Graphic illustration related to legally compliant real estate with icons of houses, keys, and documents on a blue background, featuring the text "real estate" in the center.

How to Tokenize Real Estate Interests in a Legally Compliant Way

How to Tokenize Real Estate Tokenization of assets is one of the most common discussion topics in my blockchain/web3 practice. Both tangible and intangible and intangible assets can be tokenized. I have discovered that many first-time founders get lost in the cool functionality of their product and rarely step back to determine what the marketplace

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Are Crypto Airdrops Legal?

Over the last few years, airdrops have become much more common in the crypto space. Airdrops are often used to market or promote a crypto startup or platform. But like with so many other things in the space, their legal status remains murky. In this post, I do a deep dive on the legality of

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cyrpto airdrops

The Current Legal Status of Staking in the Crypto World

The Legal Status of Staking in the Crypto World With BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies trending upward in Q4 2023 and into 2024, it is a good time to revisit an issue I have been thinking about lately. What is the legal status of staking? The Basics About Staking According to Coinbase, staking is multifaceted

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How to Use AI in Mergers and Acquisitions

Using AI in Due Diligence Due diligence is the process by which a company evaluates a potential business partner. In an M&A transaction between equals, this means that both sides will get the opportunity to look at the other side’s records of all types, typically with very little held back. These due diligence requests typically

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The Ripple Case and tokens as a security

When is a Token a Security? Lessons from the SEC v Ripple Case

With the SEC v. Ripple decision emerging recently, many commentators (see here and here) have focused on the holding of the case, which is the correct place to start. This post focuses on the holding, plus additional matters discussed in the decision and additional insights gleaned from the rest of the decision. Foundational Facts of

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What Are Smart Contracts on Blockchain? 

Are Smart Contracts Legal Contracts?

If you have been following the news around Web3 lately, you may have heard of smart contracts. They are used in a wide variety of decentralized digital transactions, including NFT sales, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and decentralized applications (dApps). Because smart contracts can relieve some of the hassle involved with traditional contracts, many businesses are

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